RICHARD PENDLEBURY: How Bethlehem grew to become the backdrop to violence

It takes a cataclysmic struggle to permit one to ponder, with out the presence of one other soul, the shrine marking the spot the place the world’s hottest faith started.

The Grotto of the Manger, beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, is abandoned. Usually queues on the birthplace of Jesus Christ resemble safety at a busy airport. No longer.

One million international vacationers go to Bethlehem every year. But, by 11am, on October 7, some 5 hours after Hamas launched its murderous rampage, the streets of the Old City had emptied. By October 10, each vacationer had left.

‘We will probably be closed till subsequent June,’ says Samir on the Bethlehem Inn. ‘The international teams have all cancelled. Even if the struggle was to finish tomorrow they would not come again.

‘On October 7, we had a Czech occasion who went on a day journey to Tiberius and by no means returned as a result of they had been evacuated from there by navy jet.’ He pauses and provides, nearly as an afterthought, ‘At least we’re nonetheless alive.’

Bethlehem was quiet this final week, because the Israeli Defence Forces carried out raids in opposition to Hamas in different elements of the West Bank.

Yet the little city stays within the eye of a storm that threatens any future peace negotiations.

We had been invited to lunch within the Old City by a bunch of Palestinian mates, each Christian and Sunni Muslim. Bethlehem, for all its cosy, carolling picture, exhibits the nice disconnect right here.

On the brief journey south from Jerusalem we comply with the dystopian West Bank Barrier constructed to separate Israel correct from potential Palestinian suicide assaults. An indication on the IDF checkpoint on the gates to Bethlehem warns that no Israeli residents are permitted to enter.

We move alongside the highway that runs beside King Solomon’s Pools which glint inexperienced with fetid antiquity. On a ridgeline above, the twenty first Century condos of the Israeli settlement of Efrat overlook Palestinian Authority-administered streets with their decrepit housing, potholed roads and uncollected rubbish.

The centre of the Old City may be very totally different; the warren of historical cobbled streets has been charmingly restored with funds supplied by international assist. But the outlets and resorts are shuttered; Manger Square, abandoned.

We eat houmous and falafel exterior a Palestinian Christian-owned memento store. Present are the proprietor George, his son Michael, 23, Palestinian Christian tour information Saif and a Sunni Muslim, Ahmed. George is on the verge of tears.

This ought to be Bethlehem’s ‘excessive season’ within the run-up to Christmas and his store would possibly count on to take $8,000 a day. ‘But now, zero!’ he cries.

‘Forty households who make these souvenirs rely on my store. We are in shock. The males haven’t any work. They do not even manage to pay for for cigarettes, solely to feed the children. Imagine that! They made settlement in [the Oslo Accords] 1993 they usually stated then ‘peace’. But it is all bull****.’

‘Three or 4 hundred younger Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis within the West Bank within the final two years,’ responds Saif. ‘This is just not the primary, not second, nor the final struggle for us.’

‘This is The End of Days,’ Ahmed chips in.

George says: ‘Six months in the past Ahmed started telling me to be prepared for the top of the world. And I laughed. And then this occurs!’

‘Nothing will change,’ Saif counters. ‘This struggle will cease and either side could have misplaced. But what occurred on October 7 did not come from nothing. It got here from strain on the Palestinian folks.’

All the boys agree that if a free election had been ever to be held within the West Bank, the ruling – and comparatively average – Fatah occasion would not be returned and the Palestinians right here would usher in Hamas.

‘The corruption of this authorities is unimaginable,’ says Ahmed. ‘They are a Mafia! The Israelis pay them to maintain the West Bank quiet they usually put all the cash of their pockets. It could be higher for us even underneath Israeli management.’

Saif says: ‘Hamas would change one factor. And that’s the [Israeli] settlers [here] would begin to be afraid.’

One of the principle sources of rigidity between the 2 teams listed here are the olive timber and olive oil for which Bethlehem is known.

The hills about are lined in groves and that is harvest time. But Bethlehem can be surrounded by West Bank Jewish settlements. Since October 7, rigidity between closely armed and fearful – or vengeful – settlers and their Palestinian neighbours has exploded into violence.

Nine days in the past, an off-duty member of the IDF was arrested for allegedly taking pictures useless a Palestinian farmer attempting to reap his olive crop. In the early hours of at some point final week, Jewish settlers got here in automobiles and shot up George’s dwelling village on the outskirts of Bethlehem, he says. The males imagine the attackers got here from Efrat.

On Sunday, in keeping with the Israeli press, the far-Right Jewish politician Zvi Sukkot referred to as for a ban on this 12 months’s West Bank olive harvest. It threatens the security of the Jewish settlements, he stated. ‘We are already dropping the harvest of my household’s olive timber,’ says Saif. ‘In the final three years I’m afraid to depart this metropolis after sundown.

‘The drawback is the settlers. Now they’ve develop into so mad and no authorities, no police or authority will cease them. There isn’t any justice, no freedom, no security for us.’

After lunch, we drive up into the rugged West Bank hill nation that is absolutely modified little for the reason that Nativity.

Hard in opposition to the freeway at Khalyel Loz, a Palestinian is busy within the higher branches of an olive tree, his household gathering the fruit under. They have 40 timber on this vertiginous roadside plot, he says, simply sufficient to make oil for themselves for the 12 months.

They additionally personal 100 acres in the direction of Efrat. ‘But it is simply too harmful,’ he says. ‘The settlers will not allow us to method them now.’

We drive on, skirting south spherical Efrat, via a panorama of empty groves that may in any other case be busy with harvesters.

In one Palestinian village, instructions are spray-painted onto buildings to information travellers away from the weapons and highway blocks of the close by Israeli settlement.

We cease to speak to a Palestinian farmer referred to as Dahoud and his two major school-age sons. They are harvesting olives from a grove of 70 timber instantly neglected by Efrat, not more than half-a-mile away.

Dahoud says his household has farmed this land for 250 years. But since October 7, he would not dare cross to the Efrat facet of this slender highway, the place the fruit of 800 of his timber is prepared. ‘They [the Israeli settlers] would shoot me.’

The following day, we go to Efrat. Some 500,000 Israelis dwell in additional than 120 settlements within the occupied West Bank that was, till 1967, managed by the Jordanians.

The UN considers these settlements a violation of worldwide legislation and an impediment to lasting peace. Israel disagrees.

Efrat, established in 1980, is without doubt one of the largest Israeli West Bank settlements with a inhabitants of 15,000. And whereas there has but to be a direct, post-October 7, assault, it’s successfully a hilltop metropolis underneath siege.

The distinction in residing requirements loved by the settlers and people Palestinians residing in Bethlehem is stark.

There is a Californian, suburban vibe to Efrat’s city planning and municipal effectivity. Domestic waste is separated into recycling bins by the shopping center with its Bagel Cafe and immaculate flower beds.

We meet the mayor, a lawyer referred to as Oded Revivi, who’s blunt about how the world has modified and why the Palestinian olive farmers are proper to be fearful.

‘We have a safety problem now,’ he says. ‘We are very shut to 3 Arab villages and the town of Bethlehem. Up till October 7 we relied on our superb relationships with our [Arab] neighbours. We didn’t actually have a [security] fence.

‘But since October 7 our actuality has modified. Fear and mistrust have risen to ranges by no means seen earlier than.

‘We can see why native Arabs are afraid that Jews will not be understanding as they had been up to now. But we’re at risk. There has been a large breach of belief.’

He provides as we half: ‘I say to your pals on the Bethlehem facet: ‘What are you doing in opposition to these terrorist acts? How vocal are you in your condemnation of October 7?’

‘Israel has supplied all types of solutions to deliver peace and all of those presents have been rejected… by the Palestinians.

‘Recently, increasingly more Arab states have been rebuilding relations with Israel, as a result of they realise that it’s the Palestinians who’re the impediment to peace.’

Before we depart Efrat we cease to look in the direction of Bethlehem.

The distance is lower than a mile. But by way of peace and neighborhood relations, it seems like an unbridgeable chasm.